Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand Read online

  The weekend’s real priority. Of course, if Ben did better at that tournament than he thought he was going to, we might end up watching the finals ringside instead. But wasn’t that the beautiful thing about Vegas? We could have the wedding any time we wanted—we just had to find a drive-through chapel. My mother would freak. “Everything’s on track, except it’s at six now instead of two.” Please don’t ask why. . .

  “Oh? Was there a problem with the earlier time?” Mom said.

  “No,” I said, shrugging and trying to play it cool. “It just worked out better that way.”

  “And you have a dress?”

  “It’s hanging in the closet in my room.”

  “And a photographer? What about a photographer—”

  “Mom, this is why we picked Vegas. We don’t have to worry about anything but showing up. The chapel takes care of everything. They’ll even have a cake.”

  She sighed and looked unconvinced. I suddenly felt like I had robbed her by not letting her help plan a big wedding.

  I held my temples. “I’m not going to apologize for getting married in Las Vegas, okay?”

  Mom gave me a look. “I wasn’t asking you to.”

  “Then why do I feel like apologizing?”

  “You didn’t think you were going to get out of this guilt-free, did you?” said my father, as if reading my mind. He grinned wickedly. I rolled my eyes.

  I caught a familiar scent, heard footsteps, and looked over in time to see Ben arrive through the front of the restaurant. I wasn’t aware of how worried I’d been until I felt a sense of relief when he came to the table.

  “Sorry I’m late, I got held up. Mr. Norville, Mrs. Norville,” he said, shaking hands with my parents. He slid in next to me, put his hand on my leg, and smiled. And all was forgiven.

  “It’s Gail, please,” my mom said, and if possible, she beamed even wider. “Or Mom, even.”

  Ben was always telling me I had too much family. Even if it were just my parents, he’d probably still say it was too much family.

  “Ready for the big day tomorrow, Ben?” Dad asked next.

  Ben’s eyes went a little wide, and for a moment he seemed to be at a loss for words. As a lawyer, he recognized when he was being cross-examined. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, managing a thin smile.

  “It’s going to be wonderful,” Mom said.

  Ben, his smile frozen, gave me a sideways glance that clearly pleaded, Say something, get me out of this.

  Poor guy. “So,” I said brightly. “Any other big plans this weekend? Besides the stuff that’s all about me.”

  She said, “We’re going shopping. I’m going to treat myself by spending too much money, and your father’s going to carry the bags.” Dad rolled his eyes, but he seemed just as happy at Mom’s good mood. “Do you have time to join us? I’d love to buy you something nice.”

  Was it too late to ditch the whole show? “I’m afraid not. Maybe you could buy something nice for me anyway.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  And at that moment I was glad to be here, glad they’d decided to come, because it was so nice seeing Mom smiling, happy, and not thinking about being sick.

  But tomorrow, somehow, some way, I was going to find time to sit by the pool with a froufrou drink. I might even miss my own wedding to do it.

  I had to have makeup done. I sat in a chair while a nice woman made me look gorgeous. I had to wear nice clothes. Erica brought in a wardrobe person to dress me up: nice slacks, shoes with heels, a low-cut blouse in a photogenic shade of red. I was a different person when they all finished with me. I never had to worry about this kind of thing on the radio. I loved wearing jeans to work. I reminded myself to keep that in mind the next time I thought about doing something like this.

  My stomach was roiling. I had done remote shows before. It was always a bit of an adventure, working with strangers and wondering if an unassuming glitch was going to derail the whole process. The trick was to keep plowing ahead like nothing was wrong. The minute you started acting, sounding, like something was wrong, the audience could hear it, and you’d lose them. They wanted confidence. Whatever went wrong, make it part of the show.

  But I had never done this in front of an actual audience. This added a whole new level of anxiety. If—when—something went wrong, I wouldn’t be able to hide behind the microphone.

  Ben stood backstage with me and held my hand. “Wow, you really are nervous.”

  My palms were sweaty. I kept telling myself, I can do this. I was in control here.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m thinking this is a little crazy. What if no one shows up?”

  “Wait, are you worried that no one’s going to show up, or are you worried about doing this in front of a bunch of people?”

  I whined a little. “I’m not sure.”

  “You going to be okay?” What he meant was, was Wolf okay? Was I going to be able to keep it together? When I got nervous, scared, or felt trapped, the Wolf grew agitated. Harder to control, harder to keep inside. I had to stay in control, or she might come bursting out of my skin, a snarling werewolf onstage in front of a theater full of people.

  That might make the morning papers. There was such a thing as bad publicity. I didn’t want to go there.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I think I’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  I squeezed his hand. That did make me feel better. “Thanks.”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. There were noises on the other side of the curtain. Crowdlike noises. I had to look. Edging up to the curtain, I pulled it back a couple of inches and peered out.

  The place was almost full. I spotted a few empty seats, and a few people wandering up and down the aisles. Their voices made a rumbling ocean of noise.

  I quickly pulled back and ran into Ben. “Omigod. It’s full. The place is packed.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It’s great. It’s fabulous. I think I’m gonna die.”

  He tried to give me a pep talk. “Haven’t you ever been onstage before? You seem like the kind of person who did a lot of theater in high school.”

  Not that I wanted to be reminded. “I did one play. Annie Get Your Gun. I was a dancing Indian during the politically incorrect Indian song.”

  He looked doubtful. “You played an Indian? Kitty, you’re blond.”

  “I wore a wig made out of black yarn. It wasn’t a very ethnically diverse high school, okay?”

  A woman wearing a headset, the stage manager, caught my attention. “You’re on in two minutes, Kitty.”

  “Thanks.”

  Another deep breath. But not too deep. I was about to start hyperventilating.

  “So,” I said. “How many people do you think are out there with silver bullets in their guns waiting to take a shot at me?” Like Boris and Sylvia?

  He gave me a look. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Ha! I’m not being paranoid, you thought of it, too.”

  He pressed his lips shut and didn’t say a word.

  The stage manager gestured at me again. “It’s time.”

  Deep breath. I mentally rehearsed my intro again, imagined myself walking out there and being brilliant. Not a problem.

  Ben gave me a quick kiss. “Knock ’em dead.”

  “Thanks.”

  I walked out into the spotlight like I knew what I was doing.

  Chapter 9

  We’d been on for an hour and no one had taken a shot at me. Halfway there. I considered it a victory.

  Nevada State Senator Harry Burger, the man sitting next to me on the stylish office chair we’d set up for my guests, was a classic western politician, complete with cowboy hat and boots, big silver belt buckle, and swagger to match. He could defend the Second Amendment and denounce Washington politics with the best of them.

  He was explaining why he had introduced a bill to the state legislature creating a l
aw that would ban psychics, vampires, and anyone else with supernatural abilities from Nevada casinos.

  “Here in the great state of Nevada we take the security of our casinos—and our guests—very seriously. When cheaters win, everyone else loses, that’s our motto, so the gaming industry has worked hard making sure none of these people get ahead. This is just another brand of cheater, and we won’t tolerate it, no sir.”

  “You really think werewolves have an edge in gambling? Really?” I had to say that with a straight face, thinking of Ben.

  “Ma’am, who knows what kind of powers any of them have? Not just predicting what card’s coming out of the shoe next, but mind control, telekinesis—you have any idea what kind of havoc telekinesis would play on a slot machine? I say it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  Telekinesis on a slot machine? I wanted to see that. . . “Senator, seriously: is this sort of thing even a problem? Are there any kind of statistics showing how many gamblers might be beating the house because of psychic powers?”

  Burger shifted, drawing himself up and taking on a serious, fatherly expression. A patriarch about to deliver his own brand of wisdom. I braced for the lecture.

  “I think it’s in our best interest to be proactive on these matters. Sure, it’s easy enough to say that it isn’t a real problem. But just because we don’t see a problem doesn’t mean the problem isn’t there. By taking this kind of action we can stop problems like this before they become even bigger problems.”

  None of this made any sense to me. If people were using psychic powers to cheat in casinos, they’d been doing it for a lot longer than these sorts of powers had been a subject of public-policy discussions. And no one had much noticed before. Was it really different than any other kind of cheating?

  Carefully, I said, “Are you sure this isn’t inventing a problem that isn’t there?”

  He gave me a patronizing smile. “I wouldn’t expect someone without a lot of experience in the gaming industry to understand.”

  Ooh, that just made me mad. “And how do you propose enforcing this ban on supernatural beings? Especially if, as you suggest, some of them are capable of mind control and can convince security officers that they aren’t even there?”

  Leaning back in his chair, Burger said expansively, “Well, that’ll have to be for the agencies involved to work out, won’t it?”

  Government in action. I loved it.

  I still had another guest and phone calls to get through, and time was moving on. “All right, then! Thanks very much for coming to talk with us tonight, Senator. Let’s hear it for Senator Burger.” We shook hands, and the senator graciously gave the clapping crowd a politician’s smile before heading offstage.

  I didn’t even need someone holding up a sign reading “applause.” The best part about doing The Midnight Hour in front of an audience? I didn’t have to guess what my listeners were thinking. I could see them right in front of me, rows of faces looking a little shadowy behind the lights. I could react to them. Their applause made my heart rate speed up.

  Never mind that it also made Wolf pitch a fit. We were trapped in the stares of hundreds of potentially dangerous faces, and they were challenging us, waiting for us to show weakness, waiting to strike. I had expected this, knowing I’d have to spend some attention clamping down on those animal instincts. But the instinct was powerful. Wolf wanted to growl a warning, then run to get out of danger. But we weren’t in danger. I kept repeating that. This was our shining moment. I was in charge here. I was the alpha. Smile, relax.

  Of course, it didn’t help that I kept seeing people— suspicious people—out of the corner of my eye. On the fringes of the crowd. Maybe not Boris and Sylvia, but people who looked like them. Like the guy in the suit sitting in one of the seats farthest to my left, dressed with a lot of polish. He had a watchful expression and hadn’t laughed at any of my jokes. Very suspicious. And one more time, how many of these people were packing heat?

  Never mind.

  The setup looked like that of a typical late-night talk show, but with radio equipment. I had a desk with my monitor and microphone. Beside the desk was a sofa for my guests, who were wired with mikes. I pictured this being sort of a cross between The Tonight Show and Howard Stern. If I was lucky. Unlucky? There’d be some Jerry Springer involved. Also at my disposal, I had the rest of the stage, where I could do all kinds of things I never could on the radio. I wanted to take advantage of the visuals. My next guest would never have worked on radio.

  “Moving on, I wouldn’t even think of hosting a show in Vegas without introducing you to my next guest, who is a member of a fine and noble breed of men. Say hello to Arty Gruberson. Arty?”

  Arty Gruberson, Elvis impersonator, resplendent in a rhinestone-encrusted polyester bell-bottomed jumpsuit, jogged out from behind the curtain stage right. He had the sideburns, he had the sneer. He joined me in the guest chair, with its own microphone. I still had my radio audience—they’d hear everything.

  “Arty, tell me: why do you believe that you’re the King reincarnated?”

  “Well, you know, it’s just a matter of fate. And mathematics. And a little astronomy. And some basic meteorology.” He might have had the look pretty much nailed, but he had an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. Closer to Barry Manilow maybe.

  “How so?”

  “Well, first of all, I had a feeling growing up. When I listened to the King’s music, something came over me. It was more than liking the songs or being a fan. It’s like they made me understand who I was, know what I mean? So I started doing some research. I figured out a few things. See, I was born right in Memphis, just an hour after the King himself passed on. The hospital where I was born is sixteen miles from Graceland, where the King left his mortal shell behind.” He started drawing a map in the air. I nodded helpfully, trying to be encouraging. He went into a convoluted explanation involving the locations of the buildings, the barometric pressure of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the angle of light cast by the sun. “If you believe—and I certainly do believe—that a body’s soul is made of pure energy, then if you calculate the time it would take for a soul to travel the speed of light from Graceland to heaven, which based on my calculations is somewhere near the asteroid belt”—huh?—“and back to this here hospital, it’s the exact amount of time between the King’s death and my birth.”

  You know, it almost made sense. “That’s. . . awesome. I think. You certainly did a lot of work to, ah, establish your credentials.”

  “I did. And I’ve got it all written down in a book I sell at my show—Friday and Saturday nights at the Hideaway, downtown off Fremont Street.”

  “Another question: why you? There had to have been other babies born at that hospital that day. Why did the King choose you?”

  “I think he knew I had the moves. He found a willing vessel in my little baby body.” He sat back, looking smug.

  “And that’s the fate part of it?”

  “You bet.”

  “Do you ever have doubts?”

  True believers always responded to that question exactly the same way. Arty said, “What do you mean?”

  “If this is really the right path for your life. You’ve basically spent your whole life becoming someone else. That has to be. . . weird.”

  “I’m dedicated to keeping his memory alive,” he explained.

  I didn’t know quite how to put this. “Do you think that maybe if you’re Elvis Presley reincarnated you’d be happier, I don’t know, working on something original? Starting a new music career?”

  “You think anything’ll top the last one?”

  He had a point.

  “Arty, would you do a song for us? What you do you guys say?” I asked the audience, which roared encouragement. Bet that sounded cool over the radio. Of course we’d planned this out ahead of time; we had a mike set up and music on cue.

  Arty trotted off to the performance space we’d set aside at the edge of the stage. He had t
he moves down—he was, in fact, a pretty good Elvis impersonator. Grabbing the mike, he said, “Kitty, this one’s just for you.”

  The bastard sang “Hound Dog.” And the crowd went wild.

  In the back of my mind I worried that the cameras weren’t working right, that the microphone wasn’t picking up my voice, that something little was going to go wrong to ruin the whole broadcast. But that was why we had techs. It was their job to worry about it. I just had to keep the show moving.

  How did Oprah do this every single day?

  Besides having my parents in the audience, which gave the evening a sort of school-play undertone (before the show, Mom had insisted on giving me a hug and telling me that I’d do just fine, she was sure of it), I spotted Dom. He was standing in the back, exuding his elegant post-Mob gangster aura and surveying the theater like he owned the place and had set up the show himself. It gave me an urge to call him up to the microphone, just to see if it would shake that smug expression. But I’d promised.

  I didn’t smell any other lycanthropes in the theater. There were a few vampires besides Dom. But nothing animal, nothing that suggested lycanthrope. I was disappointed. I liked to think that I did the show for them. That me talking about my own experiences helped them. But none of them had come. Dom had said there weren’t any outside of the show at the Hanging Gardens. Maybe I’d hoped that at least one of them would be in the crowd.

  After saying farewell to Arty, I alternated between taking questions over the phone and from the audience. During commercial breaks, I had to keep my crowd entertained—no chance to sit back and stretch during station ID like I could on the radio. I did giveaways, raffle drawings using ticket stub numbers, CDs, T-shirts, copies of my book, all kinds of things. They loved it, which was all that really mattered. If the audience—whether it’s in front of you or listening on the radio—loves you, it’ll follow you anywhere. I had fun—in the same way that bungee jumping must be fun. Not that I’d ever wanted to try it.

  I took another call. “Hello, I’ve got our next caller on the line. What’s your question?”